Printing apparatus

Abstract

To provide a printing apparatus of high printing quality for decreasing a transport amount of a film-shaped medium used in the printing apparatus, and suppressing skew of the film-shaped medium, a control section 100 that controls a transport section 49 for transporting a film-shaped medium 46 controls a transport amount of the film-shaped medium 46, corresponding to information on whether or not to print on only one side of a recording medium in detecting a type and / or Empty of the film-shaped medium 46, based on a mark detection result in initializing operation of the film-shaped medium 46.

Description

TECHNICAL FIELD[0001]The present invention relates to a printing apparatus for printing images on recording media such as cards using a film-shaped medium.BACKGROUND ART[0002]As a printing apparatus for forming images of a face photo, textual information and the like on recording media such as thick paper and plastic cards, there is a known apparatus which once forms an image on a film-shaped transfer medium, transfers and prints the image formed on the transfer media onto a recording medium.[0003]In this type of printing apparatus, first, using an ink ribbon with roll-shaped ink of one or a plurality of colors applied at certain intervals that correspond to a card width of a recording medium, an image is thermally transferred (first transfer) onto a roll-shaped transfer film, and the image of the transfer film is next thermally transferred (second transfer) to the recording medium.[0004]Each of the ink ribbon and transfer film (hereinafter, these are collectively referred to as “fi...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

This approach ensures accurate detection of film type and emptiness, reducing transport skew and maintaining high printing quality by adjusting transport amounts according to the printing mode, thereby preventing printing quality degradation.

Problems solved by technology

Accordingly, unless the film-shaped medium shifts in the same direction as the direction in which the medium is fed out of the supply spool without causing an error (deviation), it is not possible to face toward a printing surface of the recording medium to form an image, and the printing quality degrades.

However, the ink ribbon is not always transported in the pulling direction, and is sometimes rewound in the direction of winding around the supply spool.

However, when a rewind amount is increased in rewinding the ink ribbon to use, since a printing wrinkle tends to occur in printing due to winding unevenness and the like, in Patent Document 1, in the case of requiring a certain amount of rewinding or more, even at the time of printing operation of the half size, rewinding is not performed, and printing is performed using a portion of the ink ribbon existing in the transfer position to the transfer film at this point.

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